Meionite-Marialite (repaired)

specimen number:
1052583

location:
Laurinkari, Turku, Southwest Finland, Finland

description:
Blocky terminated crystals of the scapolite series measuring to 2.0 cm in size on matrix. This has been repaired. Classic locality for the species, the specimen comes with an antique label as shown at the end of the video. The antique label gives an original acquisition date for this piece of 1908.

The Laurinkari island locality, situated within the Turku archipelago of Southwest Finland, Finland, is a historic and globally recognized mineral site famed for producing large, well-formed crystals of the scapolite series, specifically bridging the solid-solution series between marialite and meionite. Geologically, these calcium-sodium aluminum silicate crystals are hosted within a highly unique Precambrian-age skarn complex that formed during the Svecofennian orogeny roughly 1800 million years ago, when regional granitic magmas and intense fluid activity metamorphosed older calcareous sedimentary layers. This intense metasomatic interaction forced calcium, sodium, and chlorine-bearing fluids into open contact zones, triggering the growth of massive, elongated, gray-green to yellowish scapolite crystals alongside diopside, hornblende, and calcite. Historically, the site was never developed into a major large-scale industrial underground or open-cast ore mine; instead, it was operated primarily as a small-scale, sporadic quarrying locality for mineral specimens and industrial calcite testing during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Specimen recovery peaked during academic geological surveys conducted by local universities and European mineralogists between the 1840s and 1920s, after which active extraction completely ceased due to the locality's small geographic footprint and environmental protection constraints.

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